How the GOP Got a Lock on the House

How the GOP Got a Lock on the House

If you were wondering
how Republicans continue to control the House of
Representatives, despite President Barack Obama’s
re-election victory and the Democrats winning a million more
votes in House races around the country, think
redistricting.

Redistricting is the process that adjusts
the lines of a state’s electoral districts, theoretically
based on population shifts, following the decennial census.
Gerrymandering is often part of redistricting. According to
the Rose Institute of State and Local Governments at
Claremont McKenna College, gerrymandering is done “to
influence elections to favor a particular party, candidate,
ethnic group.”

Over the past few years, as the
Republican Party gained control over more state legislatures
than Democrats, it turned redistricting into a finely-honed,
well-financed project. That has virtually insured their
control over the House. “While the Voting Rights Act
strongly protects against racial gerrymanders, manipulating
the lines to favor a political party is common,” the Rose
Institute’s Redistricting in America website points
out.

In “How Dark Money Helped Republicans Hold the
House and Hurt Voters,” ProPublica’s Olga Pierce, Justin
Elliott, and Theodoric Meyer reported that, “Republicans
had a years-long strategy of winning state houses in order
to control each state’s once-a-decade redistricting
process.” This strategy helped the GOP put a hammerlock on
its goal of creating safe Republican districts that would
allow it to control of the House. “The Republican effort
to influence redistricting overall was spearheaded by a
group called the Republican State Leadership Committee
[RSLC], which has existed since 2002,” ProPublica pointed
out. “For most of that time, it was primarily a vehicle
for donors like health care and tobacco companies to
influence state legislatures, key battlegrounds for
regulations that affect corporate America.

Its focus
changed in 2010 when Ed Gillespie, former counselor to
President George W. Bush, was named chair. His main project:
redistricting.” Under Gillespie’s leadership, the RS- LC
launched a project called the Redistricting Majority Project
(RED- MAP), “to influence state races throughout the
country.”

In 2010, the RSLC raised $30 million to pursue
what Karl Rove had discussed earlier that year in a Wall
Street Journal article headlined, “The GOP Targets
State Legislatures; He who controls redistricting can
control Congress.”

The “Final REDMAP Report,” dated
December 21, 2010, and posted on the Redistricting Majority
Project website, pointed out that, “Twenty legislative
bodies which were previously split or under Democratic
control are now under Republican control. Key chambers where
the RSLC devoted significant resources, include the Michigan
House, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House, and
the Wisconsin Assembly and Senate.”

The report also
noted that, “In comparison to past elections, Republicans
had more success than either party has seen in modern
history. Republicans gained nearly 700 seats on Election
Day, according to the National Conference of State
Legislatures, outperforming the 628-seat Democratic gains in
1974, 472-seat Republican gains of 1994, and more than
doubling the 322-seat Democratic gains of 2006. Before
Election Day 2010, Democrats controlled 60 state legislative
chambers to the Republicans’ 36. After the November 2
elections, Democrats control 40 chambers, Republicans
control 55 chambers, two remain tied and one (NE) is
unicameral/non-partisan.”

The final REDMAP report
wasn’t shy about how some of its $30 million was spent,
noting that it had “invested $18 million after Labor Day,
alone,” including having:

• “Spent $1.4 million
targeting four New York State Senate seats, winning two and
control of the New York State Senate.• “Spent nearly
$1 million in Pennsylvania House races, targeting and
winning three of the toughest races (House Districts 39, 54,
130).• “Spent nearly $1 million in Ohio House races,
targeting six seats, five of which were won by Republicans.
Notably, President Obama carried five of these six
legislative districts in 2008.• “Spent $1 million in
Michigan working with the Michigan House Republican Campaign
Committee and Michigan Republican Party to pick up 20
seats.• “Spent $750,000 in Texas as part of an
effort that resulted in 22 House pick-ups.• “Spent
$1.1 million in Wisconsin to take control of the Senate and
Assembly, including spending nearly $500,000 to target
Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker.... Decker was defeated
soundly by Republican Pam Galloway.• “Committed
resources to Colorado (more than $550,000), North Carolina
(more than $1.2 million), and Alabama ($1.5
million• “The RSLC invested more than $3 million in
other states including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Tennessee,
Kentucky, Maine, New Hampshire, Washington, Nevada, New
Jersey, and Oregon.”

Ultimately, weighted
redistricting—which is done by both political
parties—allowed for Republicans to continue to control the
House of Representatives even though Democratic
congressional candidates received a million more votes than
the GOP’s congressional candidates.

Dark Money Funds
GOP Redistricting Project

The Republican Party did not
build the highway leading to the U.S. House of
Representatives by themselves. ProPublica’s investigation
“found that the GOP relied on opaque nonprofits funded by
dark money, supposedly nonpartisan campaign outfits,
and…corporate donations to achieve Republican-friendly
maps throughout the country.”

Millions of dollars were
raised: “Two tobacco giants, Altria and Reynolds, each
pitched in more than $1 million to the main Republican
redistricting group, as did [Karl] Rove’s super PAC,
American Crossroads—Walmart and the pharmaceutical
industry also contributed. Other donors, who gave to the
nonprofits Republicans created, may never have to be
disclosed.”

According to ProPublica, “To fund the
work, the Republican State Leadership Committee used its
previously dormant nonprofit arm, the State Government
Leadership Foundation. Such dark money groups are
increasingly popular because they are allowed to keep secret
the identity of their donors. Federal tax law permits them
to do this as long as they pledge that politics is not their
primary focus. “Flush with anonymous donors’ cash, the
Foundation paid $166,000 to hire the GOP’s pre-eminent
redistricting experts, according to tax documents. The team
leader was Tom Hofeller, architect of Republican-friendly
maps going back decades.”

ProPublica reported that
Hofeller’s “team was paid with dark money and [since]
the redistricting process is so secretive, it is hard to
know the full extent of its activities.” Team Hofeller
“provided technical assistance to an aide to
Representative Paul Ryan as he drew new districts that
favored Republicans. In Missouri, Hofeller was the sole
witness called by attorneys representing the Republican
legislators who drew the maps there.” Hofeller also
concentrated his efforts on North Carolina. As ProPublica
detailed, dark money groups affiliated with longtime
Republican Party funder Art Pope—who ProPublica called
“the most influential conservative donor in the
state”—worked its magic. Not only did Pope donate
heavily to the redistricting project, he threw a bundle of
cash into the re-election campaign of Justice Paul Newby,
which guaranteed that the 4-3 GOP majority on the state
Supreme Court would continue, virtually assuring that any
challenge to redistricting would be rebuffed.

Extending
the GOP’s Southern Strategy

In a piece last year for
the Nation titled “How the GOP Is Resegregating the
South,” Ari Berman pointed out that redistricting, as
conducted in North Carolina, is an extension of the GOP’s
Southern strategy, “as Republicans attempt to turn this
racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with
white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the
minority for the next decade.”

Berman warned that, “In
virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and
state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains
in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in
majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by
black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or
crossover districts held by white Democrats.”

While
2010’s redistricting kept the Republican Party’s
electoral fortunes alive, voter suppression efforts, mostly
by GOP-controlled state legislatures, were largely
ineffective this time around. However, expect more voter
suppression in years to come.

There’s another electoral
scheme the GOP is kicking around; gerrymandering the
Electoral College. Instead of the winner of the majority of
votes in a state receiving all of that state’s electoral
votes, those votes would be divided on the basis of
congressional districts. In such swing states as
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia, where Obama won largely
because of big city turnout, Romney, who won more
congressional districts, would have received the majority of
electoral votes.

Gerrymandering the Electoral College
could become the Republican Party’s strategic push for
2016.

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